


Don't Ask Questions, Don't Ask Directions

by Netgirl_y2k



Category: Game of Thrones (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, F/F, Running Away Together
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-11-09
Updated: 2013-11-09
Packaged: 2017-12-31 22:37:15
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,187
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1037183
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Netgirl_y2k/pseuds/Netgirl_y2k
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>You could take Lady Sansa with you. You could take her away from this terrible place, somebody should.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Don't Ask Questions, Don't Ask Directions

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Lise](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Lise/gifts).



It was the sour smell of fermenting grapes, together with the Pentoshi sunshine creeping across the bedchamber, which pulled Shae from sleep.

Long ago, when trying to convince Tyrion to flee King's Landing, Shae had described their fantasy life in the Free Cities. _Eat, drink,_ fuck, _live_ , she'd said. In the end her little lion had remained in Westeros, and a large part of Shae's new life was taken up with the making and selling of terrible wine. 

Still, this life had its pleasures...

Shae rolled over and reached across the bed for Sansa -- even at this hour the girl would smell sweeter than the wine -- and found the bed empty but the sheets still warm. Shae rolled out of bed and wrapped herself in a sheer robe. She found Sansa breaking her fast on the villa's lower balcony. 

"You're up early," remarked Shae.

"I was hungry."

"I'm always hungry in the mornings," said Shae, causing Sansa to blush. 

Shae leaned across and stole a honeycake and a kiss; she raised her eyebrows at the attendant who they overpaid not to speak of the mistresses of the villa or their unusual lifestyle. 

*

"You could take Lady Sansa with you."

It was the only thing Lord Varys could have said to stop Shae from throwing his bribe back at his feet and refusing to leave. 

"You could take her away from this terrible place. Somebody should." He closed Shae's fingers over the bag of diamonds and squeezed slightly. "Just think about it." 

The diamonds had weighed heavily in Shae's heart and in her underclothes for weeks -- there was no hiding place in the Red Keep safe enough for this kind of wealth -- she thought of giving them back to Varys, or throwing them into the sea out of spite. 

She came close to telling Tyrion that the Spider was trying to bribe her to leave him. He was busy making plans to take his little wife to visit Casterly Rock for a few weeks, and he assured Shae that she would go with them as Lady Sansa's handmaiden, _of course._

Varys had spoken the truth when he'd said that Shae loved Tyrion, and that it was true love. Tyrion was a good man, and he had a good heart, but if he thought that a few weeks away from King's Landing was all it would take to help Sansa then he was a fool, and she could not regret that the Red Wedding had marked the end of the stuttering friendship that he'd been trying to build with Sansa.

Shae spent those weeks ordering Sansa from her bed and wiping the tears from the girl's face so that she could continue to pretend to the court that she hadn't been crying over her mother and brother.

Littlefinger returned, and he still looked at Sansa in ways that Shae recognised and hated. The boy king Joffrey chafed at the leash his grandfather had him on, and Tywin Lannister, who had eyes like flint and a mind like a steel trap, needed Sansa to have a Lannister baby, whether it was Tyrion's or Joffrey's bastard wouldn't ultimately matter to him.

Shae hadn't been lying to Varys when she'd said that she would kill for Sansa, but the girl had some powerful enemies, and Shae would prefer not to die for her.

*

They settled in Pentos, eventually. 

Shae had refused to stay in Braavos, where the damp got into everything and there was a prevailing smell of fish, and Sansa had taken against Lys as soon as they had disembarked and found the dockside filled with blue haired pirates and girls from the pleasure houses. 

Shae had never thought much of the Lyseni pleasure slaves herself; a whore was a whore, and whatever else Shae had been she had been no man's slave. 

The villa in Pentos had come with the vineyard attached; even after their long flight across the Narrow Sea and through the Free Cities the diamonds they had left were still more wealth than Shae had ever seen, but she did not want to rely on them lasting for the rest of their lives. 

The diamonds were more wealth than Sansa had ever seen either. 

"It's true," Sansa had said over Shae's scoff. "All my wealth was in Winterfell, which was never going to be mine, or in my name, which I don't suppose I can use anymore, can I?"

"Sansa--" 

"Yes, please use my name, at least when we're alone. I don't want to forget who I am completely. It's bad enough that they made me a Lannister."

*

It was during their brief stay in Braavos that Shae found Sansa spying on one of the Sea Lord's guardsmen stealing a kiss from a courtesan. 

"He never kissed me, you know."

"Tyrion?"

"Ser Loras--" Shae raised an eyebrow at Sansa "--and you don't have to look at me like that, Shae, I know Loras doesn't care for girls in that way, I'm _not stupid._ "

"I know you're not." 

"And-- and anyway, his sister told me. But I thought we might become friends, and if we had married then he would have had to kiss me at the wedding. Margaery was very beautiful, just like Loras, mayhap she was like him in other ways--"

"Do you often think of kissing Margaery Tyrell, Sansa?" teased Shae.

Sansa sounded so bereft when she said, "I think of being kissed by someone who cares for me," that Shae could do nothing but take Sansa's face in her hands and softly press their mouths together. 

Sansa emitted a little sigh and smiled against Shae's lips. 

"I care for you, Sansa. I would not be here in this rainy, damp city that smells of fish if I did not care for you." 

*

Years later, in the villa in Pentos, after the first time she'd fucked Shae, something Sansa was good at even if she blushed like a maiden at the mere mention of the word _fuck_ , Sansa said, "You've done this before."

"I'm older than you. And you know enough of my life before King's Landing--"

Sansa didn't know all of it. Shae didn't like to speak of it, and Sansa didn't like to hear it, but she knew enough; she knew of Shae's relationship with Tyrion, and of her profession when she'd met him. 

"I meant, with a woman," said Sansa.

"Do you wish to know everything about me?" Shae asked.

"I already know you," said Sansa, kissing Shae more softly than Shae wanted. "You saved me, and I know you."

*

In the end the decision to leave was easier than it should have been; Tyrion wouldn't leave and Sansa couldn't stay.

Shae told Tyrion that she was leaving; he was the only man she she'd ever loved, and she owed him that much, but they'd both been fools to think she could ever be anything more than Shae the funny whore in this place.

"Do you know where you'll go?" Tyrion asked, and the worst part about it was that he didn't sound surprised that she was leaving him.

"Where whores go," said Shae, not unkindly, because she didn't know herself where she'd end up.

"Mayhap I'll find you there someday," he'd said sadly, "wherever whores go."

She did not tell him she was planning on taking his wife with her when she left; and years later she wondered if he'd been angry when he'd discovered it, or if he still asked himself wistfully where whores went.

*

The wine they made was terrible, as close to undrinkable as wine could be and still turn a profit. 

Sansa had taken one sip of it, once, and Shae had laughed to see her desire to spit it out war with her need to be a lady. In the end she'd swallowed it down, and said. "You might have warned me!"

"Think of someone you hate drinking it," Shae advised.

"Queen Cersei," said Sansa decisively, "I do believe we should send her a barrel as a gift."

Shae had laughed along with her; but after another night, where she'd drunk far too much of their terrible wine thinking about Tyrion, and where whores went, and the stupid face Sansa had made as she tried not to gag on the wine, and pressing their lips together one drizzly Braavosi night, she would not have objected to pushing her hangover off onto Tyrion's dreadful sister.

*

It was Varys who suggested leaving on the day of the king's wedding. 

Shae was surprised by how nervous she was; she thought of the day she'd met Ros, and of the bloody corpse she'd seen being thrown into the sea. The redhead had been right about one thing, it was hard for girls like them to claw their way out of the dirt, and it was all too easy for them to disappear back into it without a trace.

It wasn't too late, she hadn't told Sansa of her plans yet, she could still leave alone; nobody (except Tyrion and perhaps Sansa) would even notice a missing handmaiden.

Then Sansa appeared wearing a gown that Shae knew she hated; she'd once caught the girl trying to pull apart the embroidered lions with her fingernails, and Shae knew she had no choice. She drew Sansa into the relative privacy of her chambers and said, "I'm leaving King's Landing."

"You too?" asked Sansa, frowning.

"What do you mean?"

"Lord Baelish is taking me to--"

"No."

"Shae--"

"Don't trust him."

Sansa smiled fondly, and Shae clenched her fists, digging her fingernails into her palms. 

"You're always saying that I shouldn't trust you," Sansa continued.

"Don't trust anyone, but especially not Littlefinger."

"I trust you," said Sansa.

"Then come with me."

"How-- I mean, yes-- but how?"

Shae produced the bag of Varys' diamonds. "Are they stolen?" Sansa asked.

"Would it matter?"

"No," said Sansa, though Shae could recognise a lie when she heard one.

*

They could have hired bookkeepers to look after the vineyard accounts, but Sansa claimed that she could do it herself. 

"I was trained to run my husband's castle one day," she said, and Shae rolled her eyes. "I wasn't very good, I was always better at embroidery and singing. Arya was the one with the head for sums--" she looked away and swallowed. "Do you have any brothers or sisters, Shae?"

Shae remembered her younger siblings as little more than the squalling infants they'd been when her mother had decided that nine years old was old enough for her eldest daughter to be earning her keep on her back. 

Perhaps that was why she had been so fierce in her desire to protect what was left of Sansa's childhood innocence. Not that at sixteen Sansa was truly a child any longer, she still had moments of painful naivety, and while she was equally lovely, she was no longer the beautiful child Shae had lambasted Tyrion for desiring.

"None that I miss," Shae told Sansa.

* 

Shae had left most of the treasures and jewels Tyrion had given her behind. The only things she took were the ugly golden chains he'd gifted her with. He had been right: they were valuable enough to buy a ship, or at least passage on a swift one away from King's Landing. 

The ship was still within earshot of the city when the bells started ringing.

"If they catch us--"

"They won't hurt you," promised Shae, hoping she was right. "They need you too much."

"What about you? Littlefinger said stealing me was treason to the crown."

Shae grabbed Sansa by the chin. "Look at me. Nobody can steal you. You don't belong to anybody but yourself."

*

They were in Lys when the news caught up with them; the bells hadn't been ringing for Sansa's disappearance but for Joffrey's death. 

"Do you wish to go back?" Shae had asked.

"There's nothing left for me there." Sansa reached out and took Shae's hand. "I made my decision."

Shae thought briefly of Tyrion, but she had made her decision too, and she'd chosen Sansa.

*

Sansa was blushing furiously when she said, "You kissed me once, do you remember?"

"In Braavos."

"You never did it again."

"You were little more than a child."

"I'm seventeen. If things had been different I would have been wedded and bedded by now."

"Is that what you want?"

"I want--" Sansa's face had turned almost the same colour as her hair. And when she leaned forward and kissed Shae, it was clumsy but sweet. Shae threaded her fingers in Sansa's hair, and remembered Varys' words about exotic foreign beauties.

*

There was more than enough room in the villa, but Shae and Sansa shared a bed more often than not, even if neither of them wanted to fuck.

Sansa pressed a kiss to Shae's cheek and wished her goodnight. Shae thought that while winemaking in Pentos might not have been the life either she or Sansa would have chosen for themselves it was still a good life; then she rolled her eyes at Sansa's gentle snores and wondered when she'd become so sickeningly sentimental.


End file.
